Are there systemic forces at work? Are men from developed countries like the Scandinavian nations increasingly leaving their countrywomen unmarried and instead seeking out more traditional marriages with brides from emerging economies? Are these brides more traditional because their home countries are less willing or able to subsidize the male-unfriendly level of feminism seen in the west? Weigh in as men all over the world discuss the issue at The-Spearhead.com: "Scandinavian Men Leaving Feminists to Themselves"

I am a young African American women who is going to marry a young man adopted from Bulgaria. Anyway when we started dating it wasn't consider strange among our families and friends. My parents wanted me to marry a good man. Someone who is kind, sincere, honest, has respect for himself and others. I believe you can find a man like that in any race. I always looked at love for a man with an open mind and heart. I believe growing up in diverse community is why I look at the world a little bit different. I am not a liberal nor conservative. I am somewhere in the middle. -Shiah

I just want to comment that my father's parents are: Father is Italian (both parents from Italy, well, one born in US, here parents are both from Italy), Mother is Dutch (both parents from Amsterdam, Netherlands. But much much farther back, the father descended from France and someone on the mother's side that I managed to trace came from Germany). This marriage occurred I believe around the 1940s but I'd need to check and I can if anyone is interested. My mother's line is German, Swedish, Scottish, and English. So a mix on that side and none of her side were immigrants as far as birth is concerned. It's definitely interest to note these things. Personally I think Italian + Dutch is unique in some ways. My dad looks considerably Italian, but as a child he had, in my opinion, distinct features that were less resembling that of someone of Italian decent. I don't know about his hair color as a child, but it's black now. My brother was the same way. My brother's hair was light gold, now it is almost black, like my dads. I've always been brunette hair and brown-almost hazel eyes.

Dear All,
I think that all mixed marriages are valid! Inside the same territorial country with someone from a completely different background (India, Romania, Brazil, England, Germany) or from someone from another continent. I have never found one country that does not have different culture within its own borders.
I dont think the color of the skin or birth certificate are good indicators of mixed marriages. For example, I’m blond and white (and still Brazilian) and my husband is as white as a German can be. So whoever look at us would think that we are alike, but we could not be more different from each other.
Unfortunately whenever such kind of study is made, it needs one indicator that is very clear and I guess birth certificate is a very safe one.

DownTee - thank. Actually, I already knew that by going to the original source of the graph at a different website, the legend could be seen. However, my point was the author of the story in TE should have included it so that readers did not have to go to an outside website. Moreover, if the outside website is down, then there is no way for a reader to find out what the legend for that graph is. Thanks again for the help, though.

The kind of mixed marriages I would like to see more of would be between rich and poor. Maybe if gov'ts encouraged rich people to specifically date and marry people on the bottom it might help to close the gap between rich and poor because poor women will be able to offer their kids a better future by virtue of their rich husbands.

Reminds me of the Cinderella story only in this case the governments are the fairy godmothers who take poor women and clean them up and match them with lonely rich guys.

They don't have to be millionaires. It can just be a general theme of the government encouraging a wealthy person to look for a poverty stricken mate. If a few women are helped then I suppose its worth it. Plus those women will have children who can continue the trend. So after a few generations it could be a cultural norm that a rich prince goes to the poorest part of town to look for a wife.

The gov't could even sponsor beauty schools that take homeless women and clean them up and teach them how to speak properly or something like that. So even if not all the women get married they would still benefit from the program.

I just realized my post sounds kind of sexist and patriarchal so I want to clarify that this is unintentional.

A pre-nup agreement is ALWAYS a good idea regardless, for protection of BOTH parties. Refusal to enter into an agreement is itself revelatory of what the refusing party expects. Many men fall head over heel when they are smitten. On balance, the ladies are ahead in the gender game. I think truly "good" men and women do not play the gender game. The ideal of ideal is both sides simply trust the other on all things.

Anyway, a standard pre-nup being automatic part of the program may not be a bad idea. You should write a book on the subject. :)

Right. The idea comes from observing the economic divide between marriable people. One party is grossly poor, the other grossly rich.

If the idea only applies where the man is the rich party and the woman is the poor party - yes, that's positively sexism in the inception. But the sexiim is easily cured by equal application where the woman is the rich party and the man the poor party? Gender-blind? It is an assumption across the board all rich folks are men and all poor folks are women.

I hope this nutty exchange is not offensive to folks who might take it more seriously than intended. :)

TE: He defines “mixed marriage” as one between a native-born person living in a country and someone born abroad. This definition is clear..."
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This definition is pure shit. I was born in Russia, live in New Zealand, and my wife is Eritrean. We're both NZ citizens. In accordance with this "clear" definition, our marriage is not mixed.
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And as far as "social integration" is going, we found ourselves in front of double barriers... though in an Anglo-Saxon country just to be a "bloody foreigner" is quite sufficient.
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@ Garaboncias:
You're so right! All marriages are mixed up affairs... but some are more mixed up than others.

" The explanation may be to do with Britain’s unusually open labour market, rather than the extent of immigrant assimilation (the labour market allows foreign men working in Britain to bring their families with them, skewing the figures)."

Yes, it's quite a wierd explanation.
For TE Britain's immigrants are already married and France's immigrants are bachelors ?
Because "regroupement familial" (a legal immigrant can bring his close family with him) is common in France. Many are criticizing this "too soft policy" which, according to them, created current french suburbs.

actually regroupement familial was a Giscard D'Estaing decision, that Pasqua removed a decade and a half ago. Now, when a immigrant wants to make his family immigrate into France, his familiy members are requested to master french vocabulary, and the french basic civil laws.
Today it's more a immigration that comes from eastern Europe, lots of beautiful girls from Russia, Ukraine, Poland... don't have problem to find a french hubby, for the boys, hmm if they haven't a qualified curriculum, don't think that they would be hired

In the US, only interracial marriages are considered mixed. A mexican-american marrying a columbian-american is not considered mixed, neither is a black American marrying a black Jamaican, or a white-american of german descent marrying one of irish descent(or all white-americans would be mixed), or a japanese-american marrying a chinese-american.

Interracial marriage is probably the best way to integrate a multi-racial society. The best immigrants are young, intelligent, hard working single people, preferably foreign college students. Unfortunately they are increasingly coming in with spouses, or returning to their home country to find a spouse after settling down, this is especially true of asian indians. Often the spouse does not speak much English and raise children who are culturally a world apart from native children. I think marriage licenses should be banned altogehter. Immigrants who want to marry a spouse from their native country should simply return and settle in their native country.

With "ethnoburbs" on the rise, asians and hispanics are also increasingly marrying their own. Interracial marriage rate has gone down for both groups, which is not good. Blacks have always had the lowest interracial marriage rates, which is why 150 years after abolition of slavery, they remain largely unintegrated with the population at large. The larger the "minority" group, the lower the interracial marriage rate and the slower the assimilation.

Your social engineering is completely oblivious to civil liberties or the principle that any form of social organization which violates an individual's sovereignty over his person, property and pursuit of happiness is illegitimate. Read John Locke a few more times.

When you study statistic datas you have to define what your are looking for.
And this definition is for Europe, not for US or NZ (@Reluctant Polluter) which are countries built by immigrants ; nor for India which is a continent country (@jamesmat).

And you can't have data about "race" in some europeans countries. "Race" is a concept very criticized here, we mostly talk about ethnicity, culture or nationality.

I rarely see arguments in favor of interracial marriage but I think most people would be against an idea like this because you are basically taking away peoples freedom to marry whomever they wish. Would you go up to your daughter(if you had one)and tell her that she had to marry outside of the race for the good of the country? Besides, one of the reasons blacks have low rates is because both sides don't want to see it happen.

According to the Pew Research Center, interracial marriages in the USare at an all time high, with Asians and Hispanics having the highest rates of "outmarrying" i.e. marrying outside of their own ethnic/racial group. The link to the study can be found below:

As far as African Americans having the lowest interracial rates, that is probably a factor of both the legacy of slavery and racism, combined with the concentration of the African American population in the American South (a region historically very hostile to interracial marriages).

It's also worth keeping in mind that size of the "minority" group is only one factor that is involved in the interracial marriage or assimiliation rate. The degree to which the minority group is integrated economically vis-a-vis the dominant group and attitudes of both groups to each other, as well as the number of generations the minority group have lived and been exposed to the mainstream American culture all play a factor as well. A similar case could be made in regards to the interracial marriage rates in other nations.

Does it bother people in the UK? In the United States, especially the south, white girls have been disowned for mixing. In New York a couple years ago a white guy was seen with a black girl so a gang of black guys beat him into a coma. Depending on where you live racial mixing can be a life threatening endeavor and I'm curious if its the same in the UK.

Immigrants who want to marry a spouse from their native country are scum of the earth foreigners, who should be arrested, detained, and deported (which goes without any shadow of doubt), because by doing so, they have already declared their allegiance, which is not in favour of the adopted country; which would apply to any first world, developed country -- not just the US.

This doesn't fully explain it. In India, there are 28 states. There are more than a dozen different languages, with each language having dozens of dialects. There is no single common market in India, and each state has its own entry taxes and duties. Each state has its own separate laws and regulations. So, I speak Malayalam, while my wife is from a different state, speaking English, and has an entirely different background. My brother married a Konkani-speaking girl. Many of my friends/colleagues too have similarly married into totally different families. So, though these marriages are from the same country, they are essentially mixed marriages, and should be considered as such. Counting on nationality alone as a criterion to decide on the mixedness is misleading.

How often mixed marriages happen, and what they mean, depends enormously on what definition of "mixed" you happen to use.

For example, I could argue that mine is a mixed marriage, because I work on mainframe computers, while my wife is a Unix bigot. But somehow, I suspect most people outside the IT industry would just read that and look confused.